Sunday, December 6, 2015

Today in reckless generalizations...

I suppose we were all just waiting for someone to suggest that last week's shootings in San Bernardino could have been prevented if the victims we better armed and that someone is Jerry Falwell Jr. who said, and I shit you not:

Pfft...obviously the solution to gun-
violence is more fucking guns.

"It just blows my mind when I see the President of the United States say that the answer to circumstances like that is more gun control-I mean if the people-If some of those people in that community center had what I've got in my back pocket right now. Is it illegal to pull it out? I don't know..."

-Jerry Falwell Jr.

President of Liberty University

Weirdly, I'm finding myself
rooting for 'gun' here.

But that's not the scary part. The truly batshit moment came immediately after he threatened to whip out what we hope and pray is his gun when he said:

"Anyway, I've always thought that if more good people had canceled carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they, before they walked in and killed us."

-additional words that came out of his mouth

In case you were wondering, he is that
Jerry Falwell's son, so maybe it's genetic?

Like, he didn't say terrorists, or even Muslim extremists, he said Muslims, like Muslims in general. He later, as in much later and on Twitter, clarified that he was referring specifically to Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the couple who carried out Wednesday's massacre. Which, ok, if he says that's what he meant that's what he meant, whatever, but that's a seriously important distinction to make. It's the difference between making a flawed argument about how more guns make everyone safer and issuing goddamn fatwa against an entire religion.

Look, I'm not saying that Falwell was inciting violence against Muslims or anything, I'm just saying that sometimes the kind of person who wants to walk around armed to the teeth is not always the kind of person who embraces nuance, so maybe choose your words?

Willingness to recognize nuance is usually inversely
proportional to the amount of flags one is wearing.